Chicken Wikipedia

This stimulates the hen to lose her feathers but https://chickenroadonline-bd.com/demo/ also re-invigorates egg-production. In some other countries, flocks are sometimes force-moulted rather than being slaughtered to re-invigorate egg-laying. After 12 months of laying, the commercial hen’s egg-laying ability declines to the point where the flock is commercially unviable.

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During the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries BC), in the southern Levant, chickens began to be widely domesticated for food. The red junglefowl is well adapted to take advantage of the vast quantities of seed produced during the end of the multi-decade bamboo seeding cycle, to boost its own reproduction. The domestic chicken has subsequently hybridised with grey junglefowl, Sri Lankan junglefowl and green junglefowl; a gene for yellow skin, for instance, was incorporated into domestic birds from the grey junglefowl (G. sonneratii).

Exactly when and where the chicken was domesticated was controversial. Inbreeding of White Leghorn chickens tends to cause inbreeding depression expressed as reduced egg number and delayed sexual maturity. When eggs are placed in a hypoxic environment, chicken embryos from these populations express much more hemoglobin than embryos from other chicken populations. Under natural conditions, most birds lay only until a clutch is complete; they then incubate all the eggs. Adult chickens of both sexes have a fleshy crest on their heads called a comb or cockscomb, and hanging flaps of skin on either side under their beaks called wattles; combs and wattles are more prominent in males.

• Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria.
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• This involves complete withdrawal of food (and sometimes water) for 7–14 days or sufficiently long to cause a body weight loss of 25 to 35%, or up to 28 days under experimental conditions.
• Egg laying is stimulated by the long stretches of daylight that occur during the warmer months; however, artificial lights placed in chicken coops can trigger a hen’s egg laying response throughout the year.
• Despite the chicken’s close relationship with the red jungle fowl, there is evidence that the gray jungle fowl (G. sonneratii) of southern India and other jungle fowl species, also members of Gallus, may have contributed to the bird’s ancestry.

Females (mature hens and younger chickens, called pullets) are raised for meat and for their edible eggs. In domesticating the chicken, humans took advantage of the red junglefowl’s ability to reproduce prolifically when exposed to a surge in its food supply. The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a domesticated form of the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), originally native to Southeast Asia. The chicken is perhaps the most widely domesticated fowl, raised worldwide for its meat and eggs.

Farming

Eggs of chickens from the high-altitude region of Tibet have special physiological adaptations that result in a higher hatching rate in low oxygen environments. Hens often try to lay in nests that already contain eggs and sometimes move eggs from neighbouring nests into their own. As with all birds, reproduction is controlled by a neuroendocrine system, the Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone-I neurons in the hypothalamus. Sperm transfer occurs by cloacal contact between the male and female, in an action called the ‘cloacal kiss’. Chickens have been thought of primarily as providers of food, but their cognition, emotions, and sociality are comparable with other birds and mammals. Chickens are gregarious, living in flocks, and incubate eggs and raise young communally.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74% of the world’s poultry meat and 68% of eggs are produced this way. The parasite Dermanyssus gallinae feeds on blood, causing irritation and reducing egg production, and acts as a vector for bacterial diseases such as salmonellosis and spirochaetosis.Viral diseases include avian influenza. Genomic studies estimated that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2,000 to 3,000 years later.

Domestication and economic production

A cockfight is a contest held in a ring called a cockpit between two cocks. Certain breeds, such as silkies and many bantam varieties, are generally docile and are often recommended as good pets around children with disabilities. Chickens are social, inquisitive, intelligent birds, and many people find their behaviour entertaining.

Farmers have developed numerous breeds and varieties to fulfill commercial requirements. Descendants of those domestications have spread throughout the world in several waves for at least the last 2,000 years. Chickens belonging to the same age cohort and sex are often kept together in industrial production settings.